A machine type communication (“MTC”) apparatus or device is a user equipment (“UE”) that is used by a machine for some specific applications. One example of such an MTC device is a smart utility meter. It is expected that such device would be delay tolerant and does not require high throughput. Therefore, in the third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”), a new work item for Low Cost MTC UE and coverage enhancement has been approved. Some characteristics of the Low Cost MTC (“LC-MTC”) UE are as follows:                1 receiver (“Rx”) antenna;        Maximum uplink and downlink transmission block size (“TBS”) for unicast (data) of 1000 bits; and        A reduced bandwidth of 6 physical resource blocks (“PRBs”),        
wherein the reduced bandwidth restriction is currently being debated in the 3GPP.
Since the LC-MTC UE, as indicated above, is only capable of supporting 1000 bits of traffic, a base station (“BS”), which may also be referred to as an evolved Node B (“eNB”), needs to be aware of the UE's limitations, i.e., recognizes and supports communication with the LC-MTC UE. This would limit the deployment of LC-MTC UEs only to those cells that support them. In other words, the LC-MTC UEs may not be well supported by legacy BSs. Such limitation may make it difficult to achieve economy of scale for the LC-MTC UEs and thereby difficult to obtain low cost benefits.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a solution that allows such LC-MTC UEs with the TBS restriction to efficiently and effectively operate in the coverage area of the legacy BSs or eNBs.